Objectivity vs Subjectivity (was: [BoI] Re: Art = science, philosophy, or other?)
Rami Rustom
> On 17 Jan 2012, at 11:27 AM, Rami Rustom <rami...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:39 AM, Lulie Tanett <lul...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 17 Jan 2012, at 10:29 AM, Rami Rustom <rami...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> So I realized why I don't know how to tackle *art*. Its because art
>>>> has absolutely no meaning outside the context of the mind. We can not
>>>> speak of objective truth in art without consideration of the human
>>>> mind. So outside of the human mind, art has no meaning. Thats why I
>>>> was talking about art expression, rather than art.
>>>
>>> Why would it have no meaning outside the mind? Does morality have no meaning outside the mind too? If not, why are these two things different?
>>
>> Morality *is* morality because of the human mind; so morality does not
>> exist outside the context of the human mind. Human minds interpret
>> their sense data creating explanations of their environments and thus
>> making complex decisions based on those explanations while non-human
>> animals do not; hence we are moral entities while they are not.
>>
>>
>>> Also it presumably wouldn't be objective if it only existed in minds, right? Because that's like the definition of subjective.
>>
>> The brain is part of the physical space and the entire physical space
>> is the complete set of objective truths; hence objectivity.
>>
>> And the mind is an emergent level resulting from the brain. And the
>> mind is part of the meta-physical space. And each mind's meta-physical
>> space is different; hence subjectivity.
>
> So are you saying it's objective in the sense that there is objective truth for any one person, but between people it's subjective?
Objective when we're talking about the brain; the brain is tangible,
as in it is part of the physical space.
Subjective when we're talking about the mind; the mind is intangible,
as in it is part of the meta-physical space.
> Isn't this a different use of 'objective' from what the rest of us/BoI is talking about? I.e. we think it's objective *across people*.
I don't think so. I looked up the words objective and subjective.
Subjective is mind-dependent while objective is mind-independent.
>>> Have you read the Flowers chapter in BoI? Do you have any criticisms of the idea that art is objective that he talks about there?
>>
>> I haven't read it yet but I think I know what its about.
>
> FWIW I don't think I've seen the arguments mentioned here, and they're not obvious/trivial, so I'd be surprised if you knew before reading it or seeing his talk on it. (I didn't.)
I don't think that BoI deviates from Popper's understanding of
objective truths. And I learned that from discussion with Elliot. So
you could say that I read the Flowers chapter indirectly through
discussions with Elliot.
>> Beauty is
>> objective in that it is a direct result of the physical space. And the
>> entire physical space is the complete set of objective truths.
>
> No, BoI argues against this strongly. It says there are ABSTRACT truths, which are true despite not being physical. (The full argument for this is in a different chapter -- the Reality of Abstractions -- rather than the beauty one. There are different arguments in the beauty one.)
>
> Beauty is in the set of abstract truths.
Yes there are objective truths in the meta-physical space too. I also
argued for that in this thread _The physical vs meta-physical spaces_,
see the last two posts:
http://groups.google.com/group/beginning-of-infinity/browse_thread/thread/803fcfe8b6ab3183/8b8c711bdc5bc515?lnk=gst&q=meta-physical#8b8c711bdc5bc515
I also argued for that same thing in the art thread. It is the
objective truths (math) in the meta-physical space that cause our
feelings to be affected by chaos/order in a painting.
>> And
>> brains are part of the physical space. And all animal brains are alike
>> in many ways so this means that they share a set of objective truths.
>>
>> But human brains are very different from each other. No two brains
>> have the same set of neural pathways. So each brain has its own set of
>> objective truths apart from the set of objective truths that it shares
>> with all other brains. Now this is still classified as objectivity
>> because we're still talking about the brain, not the mind.
>>
>> When we consider the mind, we're talking about subjectivity. Each
>> human mind interprets its sense data vastly differently than any other
>> human mind. This results in vastly different explanations of their
>> environments and thus vastly different knowledge networks; hence
>> subjectivity.
>
>
> So there are some different words here
>
> - true vs neither true nor false
>
> - objective vs subjective
>
>
> And there are some different things these could apply to
>
> - neural pathways in brains
Objective.
> - ideas in brains (aka minds)
Subjective.
Lets not interchange brains with minds. This is a mistake.
> - reality / what ideas in brains are referring to
The mind's representation of the physical space. This representation
is part of the meta-physical space.
But there are no ideas in brains. Ideas only exist in the mind.
Note that there exists a huuuuuuuge jump in emergence between the
brain and the mind.
> - abstract reality
The meta-physical space.
> - physical reality
The physical space.
> I think you are confusing truthness with objectiveness. You're using the word 'objective', when the rest of us use the word 'true'.
Well I learned about *objective truth* from discussions with Elliot
and as I understand it, the definition I learned is one that Popper
defined.
But yesterday I read the Socrates chapter and David uses a definition
of objective truth that confused me; meaning his definition didn't
reconcile with what I understood objective truth to mean.
So maybe I don't understand it. This is what I understood:
Objective truth is absolute truth. There is no error in it. And when
humans learn, we are discovering conjectural knowledge; which could
and most likely does have error in it. And by error I mean the
difference between the conjectural knowledge and its associated
objective truth. So a piece of conjectural knowledge may or may not be
an objective truth. We will never know. All conjectural knowledge is
fallible.
> Subjective/object is not a property of ideas/brains (e.g. 'god exists', 'it's wrong to hurt people', etc.). It's a property of fields (e.g. aesthetics, morality, theology, physics, etc.).
>
> Either objective truth is possible in those fields, or it's impossible in which case that means they're subjective fields. (So religion is an example of a subjective field, whereas physics is an objective field.)
Yes if a field involves the mind, then it is subjective. But if the
field does not involve the mind, then it is objective.
> Whether a particular brain thinks a particular thing or not is an objective, physical fact.
Brains don't think; minds do.
I'm not sure what you mean.
> But because people can be mistaken, the *theory that it thinks is true* may not be true.
Yes this is called conjectural knowledge.
> It may differ from the objective fact of what that theory is about.
Yes the difference is the error of that theory. And that error
represents the difference between the conjectural knowledge and its
associated objective truth.
> Subjectivity is not the difference between the mind and the brain. The distinction about subjective or objective is an opinion about whether the field being referred to in theories really exists, or not.
I'm confused by that. But I think I explained it above.
> When people say 'morality is subjective', that doesn't mean 'morality is something thought about by minds', they mean 'there is no objective truth of the matter, so when minds think about it they're not thinking about anything real'.
But morality does have objective truths. For example, no two human
minds are alike. They have vastly different knowledge networks. This
is an objective truth.
And so it is moral for humans to respect each others autonomy; hence
liberalism, ARR, and TCS.
> One can have a false idea about something that is true/objective/exists. So maybe you have a false idea about electrons -- this isn't subjective, it's just a mistaken idea about the properties of an objective thing namely electrons.
Thats right. Its conjectural knowledge that happens to be incorrect,
meaning it has error with respect to its associated objective truth.
> Here's a truth table of what I think the distinctions are:
> http://db.tt/ZSHQVRLq
I didn't mean to suggest that there are no objective truths in the
meta-physical space. All of math exists in the meta-physical space.
And a lot of that is objective truth. I've been arguing for this in
the other thread I mentioned.
-- Rami
Elliot Temple
On Jan 18, 2012, at 5:06 AM, Rami Rustom wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Lulie Tanett <lul...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think you are confusing truthness with objectiveness. You're using the word 'objective', when the rest of us use the word 'true'.
>
> Well I learned about *objective truth* from discussions with Elliot
> and as I understand it, the definition I learned is one that Popper
> defined.
>
> But yesterday I read the Socrates chapter and David uses a definition
> of objective truth that confused me; meaning his definition didn't
> reconcile with what I understood objective truth to mean.
>
> So maybe I don't understand it. This is what I understood:
>
> Objective truth is absolute truth. There is no error in it. And when
> humans learn, we are discovering conjectural knowledge; which could
> and most likely does have error in it. And by error I mean the
> difference between the conjectural knowledge and its associated
> objective truth. So a piece of conjectural knowledge may or may not be
> an objective truth. We will never know. All conjectural knowledge is
> fallible.
Objective means unbiased and existing in reality independent of people's whims, biases, opinions, desires, wishes, etc...
If something has objective reality, it exists *independent of us*.
Like does a tree make a sound if it falls and no one is around? The answer is yes. The sound exists objectively, it's not dependent on a human audience.
Objective truths would be true for aliens, and also would be true before intelligent life evolved.
We seek objective truth (as opposed to arbitrary whim, irrational guesses, ideas people want to be true, deluded hopes that reality will change to match our convenience, etc). And we find some of it.
Our knowledge is never perfect, yet it can be objective. We can have fallible, objective knowledge. We can have partial, objective knowledge. We can do things like not take ideas personally and use appropriate methods in our thinking.
We always make mistakes and have errors but that doesn't mean we aren't thinking objectively.
-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/
Brett Hall
If something has objective reality, it exists *independent of us*.
Like does a tree make a sound if it falls and no one is around? The answer is yes. The sound exists objectively, it's not dependent on a human audience.
Objective truths would be true for aliens, and also would be true before intelligent life evolved.
We seek objective truth (as opposed to arbitrary whim, irrational guesses, ideas people want to be true, deluded hopes that reality will change to match our convenience, etc). And we find some of it.
Our knowledge is never perfect, yet it can be objective. We can have fallible, objective knowledge. We can have partial, objective knowledge. We can do things like not take ideas personally and use appropriate methods in our thinking.
Brett
Elliot Temple
On Apr 6, 2012, at 4:35 PM, Brett Hall wrote:
> On 07/04/2012, at 8:55 AM, "Elliot Temple" <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> If something has objective reality, it exists *independent of us*.
>
> Does this include thought? Ideas? Abstractions? Emotions? I think the answer to all those things is yes. Not only do they have objective reality we can have objective knowledge of them. For if there exists something in objective reality that we are forever prevented from knowing anything *except* subjective things about then this does not constitute real knowledge, does it? It wouldn also mean progress wouldn't be possible if objective knowledge was not possible when it came to those things.
>
>>
>> Like does a tree make a sound if it falls and no one is around? The answer is yes. The sound exists objectively, it's not dependent on a human audience.
>>
> The quale corresponding to the sound never exists, at least in the way that this old chestnut is posed. And yet qualia objectively exist, don't they? So if the question is about the sound quale, the answer is no, isn't it? If it's only about compression waves then the answer is yes, of course...but this is where the word "sound" is a little ambiguous...like colour. It might just mean "frequency of some wave" but it also might mean the subjective perception of same.
This is changing the question to basically mean, "If a tree falls, and no one is around, does anyone hear it?" If that's the question then we still know the answer, no problem, and there is an objective answer.
All statements always have some ambiguity. But I don't think the word "sound" is very ambiguous. My dictionary specifically says it refers to vibrations.
There's no need to bring up qualia in order to talk about this.
>
>> Objective truths would be true for aliens, and also would be true before intelligent life evolved.
>>
>>
>> We seek objective truth (as opposed to arbitrary whim, irrational guesses, ideas people want to be true, deluded hopes that reality will change to match our convenience, etc). And we find some of it.
>>
>> Our knowledge is never perfect, yet it can be objective. We can have fallible, objective knowledge. We can have partial, objective knowledge. We can do things like not take ideas personally and use appropriate methods in our thinking.
>
> This is right. A big challenge in morality is to convince those that believe all moral truths are subjective that they are wrong. A bigger challenge still (because there are more of them and their ideas seem less susceptible to criticism - so it's a harder task) is to convince most of he planet that what they believe is objective truth in morality is not. For example - because a book says that homosexuals are evil, is not an objective truth. But they believe in authority more than they believe in progress. Or that progress in morality is not even possible. What do we do?
Gradual improvement and progress, step by step, sometimes indirectly.
Morality maybe isn't the best/easiest place for people to learn concepts like fallibility, imperfection, seeking out and correcting their own mistakes, etc
A different way to learn some of those concepts would be to play games. It could be chess, halo, warcraft 3, risk, whatever. There are many, many games with well defined rules and clear feedback about what works or not.
People who play such games have to learn to make adjustments when they lose or they will keep losing. Everyone who gets good at any game like that now understands some of the basics of fallibility, error correction and truth seeking.
That's a good step. Maybe they don't understand how it applies to anything else yet. Maybe their understanding has a bunch of flaws. But this is still knowledge they now have that can come in handy in their moral improvement.
This doesn't solve everything but it helps and it's a lot easier to achieve. If we put a bunch of small steps in a row, they add up.
BTW, anyone who gets really really good at pretty much anything whatsoever, normally learns a *lot* of *great* ideas with *reach* along the way. One of the many implications is: let kids pursue whatever interest they want. It's not too important what it is since the general purpose ideas with reach -- like epistemology ideas -- are the same for every topic.
-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/